Duvvuri Subbarao next Reserve Bank Governor (Lead)

New Delhi, Sep 1 (IANS) Finance Secretary Duvvuri Subbarao has been named as the next Governor of the central Reserve Bank of India (RBI), it was announced here Monday.An alumnus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Subbarao takes over from incumbent Y.V. Reddy Friday.

The announcement was made by Finance Minister P. Chidambaram amidst speculation that Reddy may be given a three-year extension.

The present Deputy Governor of Reserve Bank Rakesh Mohan was also a strong contender for the post.

Subbarao is a member of the 1972 batch of the Indian Administrative Service, belonging to the Andhra Pradesh cadre.

In the past, he has worked as secretary to the Prime Minister’s economic advisory council which, till about two weeks ago, was headed by former RBI Governor Chakraborty Rangarajan.

An alumnus of the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur, Subbarao joined the civil services after earning Masters in Economics from the Ohio State university. At MIT, he was a Humphrey fellow, and earned a doctorate in economics from Andhra University .

The new central bank governor takes over at a time when India’s annual rate of inflation is ruling at a 16-year-high, even as the country’s economic growth has slowed down to 7.9 percent for the first quarter as opposed to 9.2 percent for the corresponding quarter last fiscal.

The tight monetary policy of incumbent governor Reddy has been blamed for the lower growth and it has been primarily caused by lower expansion of India’s industrial output.